I’ve gone too long without giving a plug to my favorite little wine bar in Wilton Manors, the Naked Grape, a place where cozy hipness meets an imaginative selection of wines, a tapas menu, and the kind of lighting that makes everybody look good. And, our favorite bartender, Georgie, who turns…
A hail of darts to the Peanut Corporation of America, which it now turns out KNOWINGLY shipped products that had tested positive for salmonella. The worst of it is, so many of these peanut-infested foods went to schools and nursing homes — they couldn’t have done a better job targeting…
Beef has taken some serious body punches in the last couple of years. Michael Pollen, Mark Bittman, and a merry cast of vegetarians have been steadily hammering away at our poor American steers, calling them expensive, health-hazardous resource hogs that have done little to whittle the national waistline. Now the Association for American National…
Not on the V-Day Menu at TrinaRight, gents, it’s the most perilous time of year to be a man. Every move you make or fail to for Valentine’s Day will pretty much seal up your romantic prospects for the year. My brother once made the hideous gaffe (who knew?) of…
Jack in the Box is apparently testing a program to outsource their drive-through orders, routing requests for burgers and shakes to call-takers outside the country. The program is getting its first test run in Charlotte, North Carolina, where folks innocently pulling up to the order box are being taken for…
My favorite news item of the week: Swiss researches have discovered a new psychological disorder which they’ve called “Gourmand Syndrome.” Turns out that people who are passionately obsessed with food actually have lesions in their right anterior cerebral hemisphere — lesions which do not appear in people who are not food obsessed…
Your intuition is correct: Restaurants dropped like tasered protesters at a Republican rally last year. The not-so-bad news is that new eateries opened in many of the vacated spaces, offsetting our net loss. Read on for a partial and unofficial Short Order list of closings in Broward and Palm Beach…
One of our favorite restaurants in Fort Lauderdale, Christine’s on Oakland Park Boulevard, rolled out a new menu this week featuring, in addition to entrees, a pretty delectable line-up of small plates priced between 10 and 14 bucks. A good idea, thinks us, especially because the joint is becoming known…
No, not that kind of beard. It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world these days fer sher, but at least we can take comfort in comfort food, and nobody does it with quite the panache of chef Michael Wagner of Hollywood, one of a handful of chefs invited to create…
A friend just sent me a copy of Julie and Julia, the true story of one woman’s quest to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the space of a single year. Julie Powell’s incredibly ambitious project, which became a blog, which became a book, which became a movie starring Meryl Streep…
This month’s Slow Food Glades to Coast dinner, on Thursday January 15, focuses on our local waters with a meal hosted by Chef Dean James Max at 3030 Ocean in Fort Lauderdale. Max, as we know, has a masterly way with anything that sports fins, scales, or claws, and his…
If you thought the Federal ethics charges against Mary McCarty and her band of merry Palm Beach County and City Commissioners was scandalous enough, you haven’t heard what the California Avocado Commission has been up to in the past three years. McCarty, after all, only accepted a few free hotel…
Here’s one for my “Oh for fuck’s sake!” files:Legislators in Utah are pushing to restrict restaurants that make mixed drinks in full view of minors, arguing that all those pretty, glittering bottles and delicious-looking garnishes behind the bar constitute a sore temptation, one that could lead youngsters to an unquenchable craving…
Just a reminder to mark your calendars: The Fellsmere Frog Legs Festival kicks off on January 15th and runs through the weekend to a grand finale at the Sunday Croaker Run. For my money Saturday the 17th looks like the best day to show if you’re feeling competitive: three contests include Leap Frog,…
Football and margaritas. There is less than one month left of football season; less than one month to transform your culturally bankrupt, Dorito- and Budweiser-filled Sundays on the couch into something genuinely awesome. And for that purpose, we suggest Moquila the classy nu-Mexican joint in Mizner Park, Boca Raton. An…
Evidently I’m not the only one fantasizing about Stone Crab claws the size of baseball mitts. Slow Food Miami, in conjunction with Friends of the Everglades, is planning an event Saturday January 31st that ought to help sate your desire, at least temporarily, for things that scuttle sideways: The Stone Crab Eat…
Linda Bean, granddaughter of Maine’s L. L. Bean, is bringing us lobster. Though new to the foodie business, she’s got her own warf, her own fishermen, and now her own concept: lobster rolls, each with a full ¼ of meat, fresh and perfect and dripping butter on your grateful lap,…
Here’s a bit of the ammunition you’ll need for a lively debate with slow food organizer Diane Campion at this Sunday’s panel discussion “Why Buy Local?” Campion, heirloom tomato farmer Walt Ross, and Cafe Boulud Chef Zach Bell are hosting a seminar at the Boca Raton branch of Whole Foods from 1…
Wow, I am so ashamed of myself. I’ve lived in South Florida for 15 years, and until last weekend I’d never been to Everglades City, stone crab capital of the universe. This little one-horse town is a seafood-lover’s wet dream, and it’s barely two hours drive from the door of…
If you’re like me after the holidays, a person who routinely has trouble pushing herself away from the table**, you’re feeling fat and broke. So I looked up some traditional Depression Era recipes, hearkening back to the days when everybody was skinny because they ate so much cabbage, noodles, beans,…
Coming to a beach near you.This is a weird time of the year for transplanted New Englanders. On the one hand, Florida’s balmy wintertime tropicality is the reason we came here. On the other, wintertime in Florida always feels like a bit of a gyp. We get a little home…
Pigging Out for the Holidays.Pictured above: The 35 pounds of pork I got in the mail from Heritage Foods USA this week, fully one quarter of a Six Spotted Berkshire hog. Price: $235. I’m determined to cook most of it to feed the extended family over the holidays, beginning of course with…
